Contorted positions of fossil animals indicate rapid burial (Talk.Origins)
Claim CC361.3:
- The contorted positions of fossil animals indicate that they were rapidly buried alive.
Source:
- Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the flood, 6th ed. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 9.
CreationWiki response:
(Talk.Origins quotes in blue)
1. As carcasses dry, ligaments contract and distort the body.
While this explains some, such as Brown's Figure 9, in some cases fossils are twisted around each other, which does not occur by drying ligaments.
Also, dead animals are often disturbed by scavengers and/or water currents before their remains become buried. This can account for the contorted positions.
- While scavengers will disturb corpses, they also tend to scatter them, leaving little to fossilize.
- Water currents strong enough to contort a corpse will also tend to scatter it, leaving little to fossilize.
2. Some fossils do form by rapid burial, but these indicate only local catastrophes, such as landslides of a river bank.
Evolutionists are free to interpret the evidence any way they want to. But it is interesting that Talk Origins chose to attack only one of several examples, such as well-preserved soft tissue, compressed fossils, and fossils buried in the act of doing things such as eating.
It is true that by itself evidence of rapid burial does not prove a global flood, but it is just one of several lines of support for such a flood.
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